Guilty Minds

“Mr. Malkin,” I said. “I’m on the clock. You’re assured absolute confidentiality. Why don’t you take me to your leader.”

He ducked his head and motioned for me to follow him around a corner and down another hall. When we reached a long conference room, I was astonished to see through the glass walls, sitting alone at the head of a long black table, the man I was really there to meet.

2

His name was Gideon Parnell, and he was a Washington legend.

A national legend, actually, the subject of countless profiles in the Times and the Post. I think 60 Minutes had twice done stories on him. He’d been on the cover of Time magazine.

He was a tall, handsome, regal black man of around seventy-five whose close-cropped hair had gone white. His life story was the stuff that newspaper feature writers fantasize about. Raised in poverty on the southeast side of Washington, he’d marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., in Selma. He’d become one of the great civil rights heroes and had golfed with every president who golfed since Lyndon Johnson. Every president, Republican and Democrat, had considered him a friend (to the extent a president really has friends in Washington). He was the ultimate Washington insider, a power broker with extensive connections and friends everywhere. Now he was “senior counsel” at Shays Abbott, though I doubt he actually practiced much law. The more powerful lawyers become, the less they seem to practice.

Given the circles he moved in, his being here meant that this had to be serious. Likely he’d flown in from DC to meet me. My curiosity was piqued.

He rose, all six feet seven inches of him, and crossed the room in three strides. He enfolded my hand, which isn’t small, in what felt like a weathered old catcher’s mitt. His other hand grasped my forearm. A classic politician’s handshake, but somehow, with him, it felt sincere.

I’m pretty big myself-six four and broad-shouldered-but Parnell had more than size going for him; he had presence, and no point pretending that it didn’t make a hell of an impression. His charcoal pinstripe suit looked hand-tailored. He wore a silvery tie and a crisp white shirt.

There are very few people I genuinely admire, but Gideon Parnell was one of them. The man was a giant, and not just in size.

“Mr. Heller,” he said, “thank you so much for meeting with us.” His voice rumbled like the lowest C in the organ at Washington National Cathedral. He waved a hand around at the conference room, at his colleague lingering in the doorway like a family retainer awaiting further orders.

A few people passed by and looked curiously through the glass wall. “John, it looks like the morning rush has begun, so could you…?”

John Malkin nodded and touched a button on a switch plate just inside the doorframe. The glass wall immediately turned opaque, like a glass of milk.

“Thank you, John,” Parnell said preemptively. Malkin flinched and then nodded. “Mr. Heller,” he said, tipping his head in my direction. He eased out, closing the door behind him.

Parnell poured coffee from a thermal carafe into a couple of white stoneware mugs. “You like coffee, and you like it black, I’m told,” he said without looking up.

I smiled to myself.

He handed me a mug and gestured toward the chair next to his at one end of the long black table.

“So let me ask you something,” I said as I settled into an expensive-looking leather chair. “What was the point of making me sign an NDA? You obviously checked me out. You did your due diligence. You even know how I drink my coffee. So if you’d really done your homework, you know about my reputation for discretion.”

“Please don’t take this the wrong way, Nick-may I call you Nick?”

I nodded.

“It’s not you I’m concerned about.”

“Then what are you concerned about?”

“Others who may be watching this office and me in particular. I have to be extraordinarily careful.”

“Well, even paranoids have enemies,” I said.

After a long pause, he said, “A dear friend of mine-I won’t say client, because he’s not and can’t be a client, for reasons you’ll soon understand-is about to be viciously defamed by a scurrilous gossip website.”

“Okay.”

“This is a gentleman I have known for decades. A man of impeccable moral character. An eminent, I would say great, man. If these outrageous charges are allowed to be published, his entire career will be destroyed.”

“Is the story true?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Then what’s he worried about? Truth is the absolute defense.”

“Not anymore. Not in the Internet era. I’m not sure you appreciate the gravity of the situation.”

“Well, you wouldn’t have asked to meet with me if it weren’t serious. Tell me, Mr. Parnell. How bad is this story?”

“It alleges that my friend had a regular relationship with an escort. A call girl. A prostitute.”

“Is your friend the pope? I could see that being a career ender for His Eminence, maybe.”

Parnell wasn’t amused. “In his position, my friend can’t afford the slightest hint of impropriety. His entire career rests on his moral authority.”